House Music Production: Snares and Claps

The second weapon in the beat armory is a snappy companion to the kick.

After the kick, the next element in a house groove is the snare drum. It's main function is to provide a counterpoint to the steady pound of the kick, typically sounding on the second and fourth beats of the bar. It's not essential for a house track to have a snare: a clap is occasionally used instead. What follows applies to both.

The snare sits in the mid-range of the frequency spectrum. It is commonly blended with other percussive sounds, including claps, sticks, clicks, hi-hts and other percussion to create the requisite snap, crackle and pop.

Many snare sounds in house are delivered from drum machines and synthesizers, which are then processed with effects including distortion, compression, bit crusher and reverb. Sampled acoustic snares are often layered with them for added character.

Sonically, synthesized snares have two tonal elements. The first is a sharp attack transient that contains high and mid-range frequencies usually made from white or pink noise. The second, which forms the body of the sound, is a low pitched sine or triangle wave with a recognizable pitch and a longer sustain. This can be doubles with another oscillator an octave or so able for a more complex body knock.

This combined noise / sine oscillator model was used to create the snare sounds on analogue drum machines including the Roland TR-808 (thwat) and TR-909 (cluck).

Choosing the right sound

Thanks to the diversity of influences permeating house music there's no right or wrong choice for the raw snare sound.

Classic choices include drum machines, specially the snappy 909 and deep-tuned LinnDrumm. The latter is a favorite with electro-house producers looking to add a wonky layer or synthetic bite to the mix.

Bassline, electro, and nu-rave producers look to old rave records and classic hip-hop breaks for snare samples. There are fed through overdrive unites, bit-crushers and compressors for added grit and filth.

Funky, deep, tribal and Latin house tracks feature more organic snares and claps from disco and rare-grooved records, or targeted sample collections. Such samples often feature hi-hats, which add to their character.

Newer choices, in minimal and progressive house, include tight DSP-derived sounds and white-noise generated hits.

Snares are frequently layered for a thicker sound. The timing between hits can be loosened by triggering each layer a title before or after the beat. This gives the groove a more relaxed feel.

Sometimes clap samples come with lead-in noise to give them a sucking quality. Don't cut this noise: just trigger the sample a little before the main hit so that the noise anticipates the snare like the funk records of old.

As with kicks, the secret to a successful layered snare is choosing sounds that complement each other rather than fight. An example of a successful combo might be a fat LinnDrum snare filling out the bottom end, a live disco hit with low-end removed supplying the highs, and a stereo clap that anticipates the beat to add a sheen of mid-range polish and depth.

Tip / If your sampler offers a loop stage, like Battery, it can be used to add extra crack to a clap. The impact stage of a clap features a series of impulses before the main body of sound hits. Set the sampler loop points around the impact portion and restrict the count to around three cycles. If there is a loop tuning parameter experiment with this too.

Who snares wins

1. The snare supplies the rhythm section's snap, crackle and pop. Choose one that complements the kick.
2. Drum machines provide solid sample choices, but layer them with other samples for bigger more unique sounds.
3. Snares are ripe for all kinds of processing treatments, from compression to bit-crushing. Delay layered samples for great stereo sounds.
4. In progressive and minimal styles snares are often mixed so low that they become almost inaudible - their role is to supply a little extra bite to kicks two and four. 

You can read about the kick drum with more detail in Sample Magic's book "The secrets of house music production".